Elections

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All 435 seats of the House of Representatives are up for election in 2018. While most of these seats are safely Republican or Democratic, many are swing districts. The following US House districts are swing districts, meaning that they were decided by a vote margin of 15% or less in the 2016 election.[2]

Local elected officials have immediate authority over everything from the quality of the air we breathe and the water we drink, to the skills and talents that public-school students have at graduation, to what police officers focus their time enforcing and who gets probation or prison time.[3] All citizens of the state are able to vote for their governor as well as statewide judicial seats on courts of appeal. People vote for their state legislators based on what district they live in, and their local officials based on their city and/or county.[4]

According to the National School Boards Association, “the school board represents the public’s voice in public education, providing citizen governance for 1) what the public schools need; and 2) what the community wants.”[5] There are often multiple school districts per county. [6] Check out the State and Local Pages to find out about your school board elections.

The head prosecutor of a county or set of counties is called different things—State Attorney, District Attorney, Prosecuting Attorney, or County Attorney—depending on the state. However, their role is the same: to prosecute misdemeanors and felonies that arise in the county or set of counties.[7] The head prosecutor in a county or counties exercises a wide range of discretion, including who to charge with a crime, whether to go forward with prosecuting an incident as a crime, and what crime or crimes to charge a person or persons with.[8] Since criminal convictions and even arrests have direct consequences (jail/prison/probation) as well as collateral consequences (job prospects, housing, professional licensing),[9] local head prosecutors have a large amount of power. Indeed, the majority of prisoners in the US were prosecuted by local prosecutors' offices,[10] and the US has the highest prison population in the world (and the second-highest rate).[11][12] Check out the State and Local Pages to find out about your local prosecutor elections.

The sheriff leads the Sheriff’s Office in a specific county. Officers for a local sheriff's department enforce laws within the jurisdiction of their county. Sheriffs set policing priorities for their officers and use their standing to lobby for change in their local communities—and sometimes even statewide.[13] Check out the State and Local Pages to find out about your local sheriff elections.

County Commissioners make policy involving elections, voter registration, veterans’ affairs, appointment of county personnel and fiscal management. In addition, they adopt county budgets, assess property, levy taxes, and borrow funds for construction projects, among other tasks.[14] Check out the State and Local Pages to find out about your local county commissioners.

City council members are elected to run city councils. City councils make city planning and zoning decisions, propose and adopt ordinances with the power of law, enforce building codes, and more.[15] Certain cities have home rule charters that permit city councils to govern with a greater level of authority.[16] Check out the State and Local Pages to find out about your city council elections.

In the 2016 presidential election, Hillary Clinton won 65,844,610 votes―48.2%―compared with Trump’s 62,979,636 votes, or 46.1%. Other candidates took 7,804,213 ballots, or about 5.7% of the popular vote.[17] Trump won the election despite getting nearly 3 million fewer votes because of the electoral college system, which awarded him 306 electoral votes to Hillary Clinton's 232. In the end, 2 of Trump's electors and 5 of Clinton's refused to vote for the candidate they were pledged to, resulting in Trump being elected President with 304 electoral votes.[18]

Popular explanations for Trump's victory include racism, sexism, economic anxiety, "identity politics," antiestablishment sentiment, media bias, and high-profile FBI and foreign interventions in the election. Empirical evidence shows that racism and sexism are better explanations for Trump support than economic anxiety. [19]

Racism and sexism more strongly predict support for Trump than economic anxiety

New research suggests that implicit sexism, the tendency to associate men with careers and women with family, may have had an impact even with people who don't identify with explicitly sexist beliefs.[20] This type of bias is hard to measure but has been found to be especially strong among women, particularly women who planned to vote for Trump.[21]

Gender bias varies by voter preference

Role of Institutional RacismInstitutional racism played a clear role in electing Trump. For example, the electoral college system—which was built as a compromise to appease slaveholding states[22]—gave white voters disproportionate voting power in the 2016 Presidential election.[23]

Electoral College system gives white voters more voting power

Other forms of institutional racism—strict voter ID laws, felon disenfranchisement laws, targeted cuts to early voting hours and polling locations—also likely reduced black turnout in pivotal swing states such as North Carolina,[24]Wisconsin,[25] and Florida.[26]

There is strong evidence that the FBI Director James Comey's unprecedented decision to intervene in the last few weeks of the election caused Hillary Clinton to lose the election.[27][28] The FBI story was a dominant news story during the last few weeks of the election, and during this time, polling indicates that Clinton lost substantial support from almost every constituency—estimated to make up as much as a 6% swing in the election.

Effect of FBI Director Comey letter on support for Clinton

Voter Demographics and Implications

Some post-election analyses blamed Hillary Clinton's loss on "identity politics"[29] and a failure to appeal to working-class white voters (identified as white voters without a college degree), who voted overwhelmingly (65%) for Trump.[30] While this constituency comprised a massive 47% of voters in 2016, there is evidence that the Democrats would have won anyway if their candidate had resonated more strongly with young people and people of color.[31] This suggests that a future Democratic candidate will need to turn out voters who stayed home in 2016—voters who are disproportionately young and of color, especially young black people.

In fact, Democrats would have won Wisconsin and Michigan and eliminated most of Trump's lead in Pennsylvania if black turnout had matched 2012 levels in three cities—Milwaukee (41,000 fewer votes than 2012[32]; Trump won Wisconsin by 27,000), Detroit/Wayne County (38,658 fewer votes than 2012[33]; Trump won Michigan by 11,612), and Philadelphia (Clinton got 35,000 fewer votes than Obama in 2012 [34]; Trump won Pennsylvania by 68,236). Had Clinton won these three states, she would have won the election.